


This is just a past life

by LucyCrewe11 (Raphaela_Crowley)



Series: Susan is a Mermaid, Peter Is adopted (Because That's a Thing, Seventeen-year-old Me Decided) [4]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, H2O: Just Add Water
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen, POV Susan Pevensie, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27257422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/LucyCrewe11
Summary: Susan decides she wants to find out about Peter's life before he was a Pevensie back before her family adopted him.
Relationships: Peter Pevensie/Susan Pevensie
Series: Susan is a Mermaid, Peter Is adopted (Because That's a Thing, Seventeen-year-old Me Decided) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977607
Kudos: 3





	1. The past life that's not gone

**Author's Note:**

> Written October 2008

_Laughter fills the air. It's a Royal Narnian hunting party. The High King Peter rides out in the front on his tall mount. He stops suddenly and stretches out his arm. A golden-eyed brown-feathered falcon flies to him and lands on the outstretched arm._

_"There is good hunting ahead, your majesty." The Falcon tells him._

_Queen Lucy and King Edmund both, tighten the grip on their bow and arrows and grin. They ride ahead leaving High king Peter and Queen Susan behind._

_Peter gets off his horse and walks into a green thicket._

_"Peter?" Susan calls after him. "Where are you going?" He doesn't answer so she sighs and gets off her horse to follow him._

_"Peter?" She calls as she pushes her way through the thicket. "Peter? where are you?" After pushing for a while, she finds that she's in a clearing where the bushes have parted and the grass is both lighter and shorter._

_Peter is standing in the middle of the clearing. Susan goes over to him. She opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out so she closes it again. He leans forward and kisses her and she kisses him back. Because their heads are titled, their crowns fall off. The soft grass muffles the sound of Peter's crown crashing to the ground but can do nothing about the pinging sound Susan's crown makes as it strikes against his, hitting the ground a few seconds later._

_"I love you." Susan whispers as Peter slips his arms around her waist._

_"Do you?" He asks._

_"Of course I do." She seems almost offended._

_"But you barely know me." Peter says._

_"How can you say that?" Susan asks. "I've known you since the day I was born."_

_"You knew Peter Pevensie well enough." Peter agrees. "But you don't know anything about Peter Burke. You don't know anything about my family or where I came from. You don't know anything about me."_

_Susan looks up into his eyes and sighs, knowing that he's right._

Bump. The bus ran over a pot hole causing everyone in the back seats to be slight jolted from their original position. Susan had been asleep dreaming about Narnian hunting parties, laughter, and kissing. Now she was awake looking out the window of the bus as the drizzle from the gray-clouded sky hit the glass. The scene had completely changed. Now she was no longer a queen in royal hunting garb but a lonely bereaved young woman wearing her simplest traveling clothes.

One year. That's how long it had been since the railway crash took them away. Susan still felt nervous getting on trains and for months has refused to get on the subway or a bus. But she'd slowly gotten over her public transportation phobia with the passing of time. She dreamed about her dead loved ones less than she had before and sometimes wondered if that meant she was starting to forget them. It was the worry of life being as though they'd never existed that led her to endure the pain of looking at the photographs of them she still had.

Susan didn't live in the house she'd grown up in anymore. She moved out, the place was listed as an estate belonging to a deceased owner, and everything in it that Susan didn't take with her to her new three roomed studio-apartment (Which was located on top of a pizza shop) was sent off to god-knows-where to be sold. The profits given to settle any debts the family had had during their lives. (Peter's college tuition, furniture that hadn't been full paid for let, the television set that still had two payments left on it, etc...)

She thought about Peter's last words to her in the dream she'd just woken from. 'You don't know anything about me'. Not the most comforting words but much better than his real last words to her aka, 'I never want to see you again'. But surely he couldn't have really meant that. She'd spend the whole year telling herself that he didn't really mean it. That he was just angry. That if he had lived, he surely would have come back to her. After all, he'd loved her. Hadn't he?

'You don't know anything about me' Rang through Susan's head again. She reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper, a list.

"That's what I'm trying to change." Susan whispered softly, looking down at her list.

The very first thing on it was,

1) Meet Peter's birth parents.

Under it, she's scrawled down the address she'd managed to get a hold of. It was pretty much right across from Peter's spot in the park. It had been their place before he'd died. Now it was only her place.

Jacob and Elise had ended up moving back into the house Peter had lived in during his time with them. They had gotten bored of their new home (The one they'd gone to after dropping Peter off at the orphanage) and returned. It was after all a very impressive house.

Susan looked up at the mansion wondering if it was possible for a person's eyes to widen until the eye balls fell out. She'd heard his family was very rich but she'd never imagined they were that rich. This was absurd wealth. The house had gargoyles on the balconies! It was almost half the size of pre-ruins Cair Paravel. She swallowed hard as she walked through the iron gate passed the sliver-studded water fountains and perfectly trimmed lawn to the stairs that led to the front door.

What am I going to say? Susan wondered. Who am I going to tell these people I am? Why am I doing this again? These people never loved Peter I don't need to know them to know him. This is stupid. No, I have to do this. I have to.

But what was she going to say to them? It wasn't as if she could just blurt out, "You don't know me, but if your dead son wasn't dead, I'd probably be your daughter-in-law now." So just what could she say? Why hadn't she thought this through? She'd used to be so practical, why was just jumping head first into this? Now she was in front of a very imposing wooden door. She rang the bell. It sounded like a grandfather clock.

The door opened. A maid stood there holding a feather duster in her left hand. "May I help you?"

"I'm looking for Jacob and Elise Burke." Susan told her. "Are they here?"

The maid nodded. "May I inquire of the reason for the visit." She eyed Susan's clothes and knew at once that she as not one of Mrs. Burke's friends' daughters.

"It's about their son, Peter Burke..." Susan tried not to stammer knowing how nervous it would make her sound.

"Bless me, I haven't thought about him in years." The maid said. "The last time I heard of him was when Mrs. Burke told me to take his clothes to the state orphanage."

"Did you know him?" Susan asked her. She seemed old enough to have been around when little Peter was there, but if these people treated their help the same way they treated their son, then it wasn't likely.

"Not well." The maid said. "I just cleaned the room. I taught the head-maid the words to a lullaby for him once...that's about it. Why do you ask about him?"

"I'm his girlfriend." Susan said, wondering if she should have said 'I'm his sister' instead. "Or at least, I was."

"Was?" Adele asked.

Susan swallowed again feeling her throat closing. "Peter died in that big railway accident last year."

"I didn't see the name 'Burke' in the listing." Adele said.

"He has a different surname now." Susan explained.

Adele let Susan in the house and added, "That's right, he would've taken the last name of his adopted parents whoever they were."

"May I see Jacob and Elise now?" Susan asked.

"Adele, who's at the door?" A woman's voice called.

"A visitor for you and Mr. Burke Ma'am." She answered.

"Tell whoever it is, to meet me in the east wing drawing room." The woman's voice said.

"This way, Miss..." Adele started, she stopped walking as well as speaking. "I didn't get your last name."

"Pevensie." Susan said. "Susan Pevensie."

The drawing room was done in all gold and white colors. Susan took a seat on the white couch to the left of the gold-rimed fireplace.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Adele offered.

"No thank you." Susan told her.

"Um, Hello there?" A tall middle-aged woman entered the room. Elise had aged gracefully and was though older with a frown line or two was still very beautiful. Her golden hair was pulled back in a bun and there wasn't a single strand of gray in it. She wore a long fashionable blue gown with lace trimming.

"Elise Burke?" Susan asked to be sure.

"Yes and who are you?" Elise asked.

Jacob walked in. He had not aged quite as well as his wife. his hair was almost all gray but he had managed to stay in shape and anyone could tell he'd been very handsome when he was younger. "Who is this young lady?"

"I'm Susan Pevensie." She told them.

"And we know you how?" Jacob asked.

Susan looked shook her head at them and then said, "You don't know me, Mr. Burke. But I know of you, I'm your dead son's girlfriend."

"Oh my." Elise took a seat and put her hand to her heart.

"Paulo is dead?" Jacob asked looking a little sad but not terribly shaken.

"Peter." Elise corrected him.

Susan sighed. She'd found the Burkes alright. She only wondered if she would be able to keep from hating them.


	2. good in all people?

"What happened?" Elise asked.

Why should you care? Susan thought bitterly. You're the ones that didn't want him in the first place. But she'd been the one who'd come to them, not the other way around, so she didn't say what she was thinking.

"He died in that railway crash." Susan explained.

"Poor Perry." Jacob said getting a little misty-eyed. "He was so young, what was he...fifteen?"

"He was twenty-one." Susan willed herself not to scream by digging her finger nails into the side of the couch. "And his name is Peter."

"Yes of course." Jacob said looking as though he was bored with the topic already. Then he called for the maid. "Adele, please bring some tea for our guest."

Adele came into the room. "Coming right up, Mr. Burke."

"Oh I don't wa-" Susan started, but stopped when she realized they weren't listening anyway. Why waste her breath?

"Oh and Adele?" Elise motioned with her finger for the maid to come closer. "Use the peach-patterned china."

"It has a few chips in it ma'am." Adele warned her. "I thought the rule was we used the rose-bud set when there were important guests."

"Oh, she's not important." Jacob cut in, his voice dead-serious before Elise glared at him.

Susan didn't care if they thought she wasn't important enough for the good china. If they ever came to her, she wasn't going to let them use any china, she'd pour the tea in right their laps, that is if she was willing to waste tea on them.

"'Bring out the sunflower china then." Elise told Adele. Then she turned to her husband, "And don't you say a word about it."

"I wasn't going to." Jacob said, self-righteously. "The china's your business."

"Now didn't you say you're last name was 'Pevensie'?" Elise asked Susan as Adele re-entered the room carrying a tray with a sun-flower patterned tea set on it. It was so fast that Susan wondered if she'd hadn't just re-heated some old tea rather than make it fresh. The tea was luke-warm when she took a polite sip and struggled to swallow it and not spit it out on Mrs. Burke's coffee table.

"Yes I did." Susan said as calmly as she could manage.

"Wasn't that the last name of the family that adopted him?" Elise asked.

"Yes, it was." Susan told her, putting the tea cup down unable to take another sip of the stuff.

"Use a coaster." Jacob told her.

Susan gave him a phony smile and moved the cup onto a coaster so it didn't ruin the table.

"But you said you were his girlfriend?" Elise asked to be sure.

"Yes." Susan said cautiously wondering what Elise was getting at although she could guess if she had to.

"That's the worst of young ones." Jacob said as though he was a professor giving a speech. "They never pick out someone that wont cause a row."

Susan glared at him. She came close to picking up her tea-cup again and dumping it over Mr. Burke's head but she kept her cool.

"I have a question for you." Elise said looking for once like she actually cared about the conversation they were having. "Why did you come find us?"

"If it's for money, we're not giving you anything." Jacob added quickly.

Susan shook her head. "I don't want your money."

Jacob looked at her as though she had just said 'I don't breathe air'. "Then why are you here?"

"Because I loved your son very much and I wanted to know more about him." Susan stood up, grabbing her coat. "But It was probably a mistake coming here, I can see you don't want to talk to me." She started for the archway leading out of the room. "Thank you for your time."

"Goodbye." Jacob started to wave before Elise slapped his hand down.

"Susan, please wait." Elise said quickly.

Susan turned around. "Why?"

"Do you want to see where, Peter lived when he was with us?" Elise offered.

For the first time since she'd met the Burkes, Susan's smile was real. "I'd like that." She said. "but I have a question for Mr. Burke that I forgot to ask."

"If it's 'can I borrow a hundred pounds?' the answer is no." Jacob warned her.

"No it's not that, I wanted to ask. You sent a letter...to our family years ago...What was it about?" Susan had never discovered what was in the letter Lucy had found. Lucy hadn't read it. Susan strongly suspected Peter had thrown it in the fireplace shortly after it had been found because she'd found what looked like a corner of a burnt envelope in tucked between two logs one morning when she was cleaning it.

"I never wrote a letter." Jacob said.

"I wrote it." Elise confessed. "Mrs. Pevensie had written to me requesting Peter's birth certificate. I didn't have it. I had misplaced it a long time ago. That's all the letter was about. I signed it under Jacob's name. That's what I do to in most letters to people I'm not close with."

"I did not approve such an action." Mr. Burke frowned.

"Eliza! Lessie!" Elise called for her other two maids, ignoring Jacob's protest. "Please show Miss Pevensie to the nursery, she wanted to see it."

Lessie and Eliza rushed in looking rather out of breath. "Right this way, miss." They showed Susan to a carpeted stair case. Jacob and Elise didn't follow.

"May I ask why you want to see it?" Eliza asked as they approached the door.

"She's Peter Burke's girlfriend." Lessie said before Susan could speak.

"I thought he was dead." Eliza whispered. "I saw a 'Peter Pevensie' listed in the newspaper. Wasn't that the name of the people who adopted him?"

"He is dead." Susan told them.

"Oh, how sad." Lessie sighed, not sounding very sad at all, as she opened the door to the main nursery.

Susan looked it. It was a fancy, but lonely place. She couldn't imagine how horrible it must have been to live in there day in and day out. She looked at the crib, which had been taken apart and pushed into the corner. The toys where all in a large box that said, "Peter" in loopy script. (Gwen had written that). There were a few picture books stacked messily in a corner. Now she knew why he didn't like to talk about it. What a depressing place to live with out a mother or father.

"Have you seen all you wanted, Miss?" Lessie asked. "Eliza and I wanted to get back to our television progamme. Jimmy is going to confess that he's Lozella's half brother."

"Yes, I'm done." Susan followed them out of the room. She walked down the stairs, trying not to cry. She found herself wondering about something she'd never thought of before. Maybe the reason Peter had been so angry with her before the crash had been because she was starting to act just like Elise. Caring about nothing but fashion and money and 'important' people. Maybe that was the reason he'd never wanted to see her again.

The sound of a grandfather clock went off in the entry way. Someone was at the door.

"Susan, could you get that please?" Elise asked.

Why not? Susan thought. I'm on my way out anyway. She opened the door and a kind-faced woman maybe a year or so older than Elise stood there. She looked almost exactly like Elise with the exception of being a little chubbier and having a very large nose. Her hair was just like Elise's though, it was in a half up half down style and had a little bit of gray in it.

"Hello." The woman said. "Are you a new maid?"

"No, I was just visiting." Susan explained. "And I'll be leaving now." She started to go around the woman.

"But wait...do I know you?" The woman asked looking very confused. "You seem familiar."

"I don't think so." Susan said turning to face her. "I don't know you."

"I think I know something of you but I can't figure out where." The woman looked very confused. "What's your name?"

"Susan Pevensie." She said.

If she had said 'Phyllis' The woman would have known her at once because her son, never stopped talking about a girl named 'Phyllis' and had described her so perfectly that it was impossible not to know what she looked like. But she was now more concerned with the fact that Susan had said 'Pevensie'

"Did you say Pevensie?" The woman looked quite taken back.

"Yes." Susan said, wondering if she should shut the door, before Elise's fat flat-faced white fluff ball of a cat got out.

"Any relation to Peter Pevensie?" The woman looked like she might cry.

Susan nodded and was instantly crushed by a tight hug from the woman who had tears streaming down her face.

"And you came all this way to find his parents didn't you?" The woman looked so moved.

Susan nodded again thinking that if she spoke she might start sobbing.

"Come." The woman took her hand and led her back into the drawing room where Elise and Jacob still sat.

"You still here?" Jacob looked annoyed to see Susan again.

"Shut up, Jacob." The woman growled.

"Don't be rude to my husband, Annie." Elise said.

Annie ignored her and turned back to Susan. "Have a seat dear. I want to hear all about my poor nephew if it's not too hard for you to talk about it. that is."

"I think I could talk about it." Susan sighed. No one had ever wanted to hear her talk about Peter or any of the others.

"What was he like as an older boy?" Annie asked. "I was so set on adopting him." she glared at Elise and Jacob. "you might have left him with me instead of that orphanage."

Annie had gone to the orphanage to get him but had been to late, Helen had already come and taken him home. And Annie had no wish to pull Peter out of the only happy family he'd ever known.

Jacob shrugged. "I thought Percy would like the orphanage."

Elise rolled her eyes. "Peter."

"It doesn't matter now, he's dead." Jacob said in a point-blank 'whatever' tone of voice.

Susan wanted to throw something at his head for saying that but decided to ignore it for Annie's sake. "He was..." Susan said as she opened her bag and pulled out some black-and-white photos, handing them to Annie.

Tears slid down Annie's face as she looked at them. She stopped at the last photo ever taken of him (By Lucy messing around with the camera) and had to blow her nose into a tissue. "He got so big."

"What was he like?" Susan asked. "When he was little."

"Lonely." Annie sighed, handing the photos back. "That's about all that could be said for the poor child."

Before Susan left, Annie had something to ask her. "I'm throwing a dinner party for a few friends and family members at the end of the week." She said. "I'd really like you to come."

"I don't know if I should." Susan said. After all she wasn't related to them. She barely knew them.

"Nonsense." Annie said. "You're Peter's family and that makes you our family."


	3. Faithful truths

Certainly this wasn't the same orphanage Peter had lived it before becoming a Pevensie. It couldn't be. From the little bits Susan had managed to get out of him when he was alive, she had concluded that it was a small state-run overly clean place that was neither a bad place or a good one but somewhere in between. Yet, the building she stood in front of now wasn't like that at all. It had three wings and a fancy front door. But the addresses was right. Perhaps they'd changed the street numbers? Susan decided to check. She walked up the two, surprisingly smooth marble steps that led to the door. and rang the bell. It sounded like a cheerful blue-bird's call.

To the left of the door, Susan noticed an iron sign that said, 'Petta and Carl's School for Bereaved children.'

The door opened and a tall young woman a few years older that Susan stood there. She had red hair wrapped into a tight pig-tail style bun on the top of her head. It was so long that if it was down it would have nearly reached her feet. Her eyes were wonderful bright eyes that were a light friendly green that reminded one of rolling hills of grass in the spring time.

"Hello, I'm looking for Open Springs orphanage, is it around here?" Susan asked the woman politely.

"Bless me, this place hasn't been Open Springs for years." The woman exclaimed looking very surprised. "Not since my brother and I brought and remodeled the place. It's a private run orphanage now and we like to think it's a little nicer than it used to be."

"It does seem different." Susan agreed looking to the side at the beautiful lawn decorations that were carved to look like grazing fawns.

"Did you see it before?" the woman asked.

"No..." Susan shook her head. "No exactly, I heard...things..."

"Well do come in." the woman said kindly. "My name is Petta by the way, what's yours?"

"Susan." She told her as she entered the hallway. It smelled like gingerbread cookies and apple pie. "Susan Pevensie."

Petta stopped in her tracks and spun around. "Pevensie?" She gasped. "Are you by any chance related to Helen Pevensie?"

Susan nodded. "I'm her daughter."

Petta's face lit up. "Carl!" She started hollering for her brother. "Carl! Come quick!"

A young man Petta's age with brown-red hair (It had changed to a more rusty color than it had been in his early boyhood days) and the same green eyes as his sister rushed in. "What's up?"

"Carl, this is Helen Pevensie's daughter." Petta told him happily.

"I'm very pleased to meet you." Carl said shaking Susan's hand. "Do come into our office and tell us how everyone is."

Susan was then pulled into a room which was no longer the dull place it had been when it had housed Mr. Smelter's pencils and paper. It was now a bright room with a coo-coo clock, photos all over the walls, and lots of paper flowers scattered everywhere.

"Excuse the mess." Petta apologized. "The children got some new crayons and paper the other day and went a little crazy during make-your-own-flower-hour."

"That's alright." Susan said smiling at a drawing on the desk of a little birdie flying over a rainbow. It was so sweet and pathetic in an innocent way. Then she took a seat in on of the soft-cushioned chairs.

"Now how is everyone?" Petta asked as she and Carl settled into their own chairs.

Didn't they know about the train crash? From the looks on their faces, Susan assumed they had missed the news. "Do you read the daily news?"

"Oh we don't allow reading newspapers here." Petta explained. "We feel that it may depress the children and we want them to have the happiest stay possible. We don't even let them color newspapers anymore. We have real coloring books donated from schools across the country."

"Why do you ask?" Carl wanted to know.

Susan took a deep breath. "My whole family died in railway crash last year, it was in the paper."

"I'm so sorry." Carl and Petta both grew misty eyed.

"Peter...did he..." Petta wanted to be sure.

Susan nodded as a few of her own tears escaped and landed on the air of her chair. "He did."

"Poor boy." Petta sighed softly. "He was a friend of mine when I was little"

"What was he like?" Susan asked her.

"Sad." Petta recalled, her eye-lids closing a bit as she spoke. "He had very sad eyes. He used to spend most of the day crying at the window seat."

"He was a good child." Carl admitted. "Better behaved than I was at the very least."

"Oh, I wonder if Emily knows about this." Petta said almost in a whisper. "Poor Emily..."

"Who's Emily?" Though Peter had remembered Emily like he had promised, he'd never told Susan anything about her.

A far away look came into Petta's eyes as she remembered her friend. "Emily and I were both friends with Peter when he was here but Emily saw him more recently."

"Did she?" Susan wondered why she'd never heard about this before. "When?"

Emily had been adopted at age eight by a family who owned a dance studio. She had turned out to be talented and as she got older became rather famous. She spent most of her time on-tour.

"I don't know...maybe four or five years ago?" Petta guessed. "She was talking a break from touring and he was staying with a poor professor..."

"Professor Kirke." Susan said softly thinking of the kind man and how much she missed his grandfatherly presence in her life.

"Yes that's the one." Petta said gratefully. "I got a letter from Emily shortly after telling me all about him. Poor Em."

"Why what happened to her?" Susan asked. Why was she 'poor Em' when she was a rich dancer with a good family?

Petta let out a sad little sigh. "Emily ended up falling in love with him even though he was at least three years her junior."

Susan suddenly felt a little jealous thinking about Peter spending time with a graceful and mostly very beautiful dancer while she'd been away in America assuming he was doing nothing but studying and pining for her.

"Really?" Susan asked trying (But failing) not to talk through her teeth. "You don't say?"

"They even kissed once." Petta added.

Susan now felt more betrayed than jealous. She'd thought he had loved her not some orphan ballet star.

"Are you okay?" Carl asked noticing the angry hurt expression on Susan's face.

"I'm fine." Susan lied. She couldn't believe Peter had cheated on her like that. She turned back to Petta. "What became of 'poor Em'?" Susan asked not without a hit of scorn in her voice.

"Peter didn't love her back." Petta explained. "The whole thing was one sided. After she kissed him that one time and told him how she felt he said he was in love with another girl who was currently visiting America. And that he wasn't interested in Emily in that way."

"He did?" Susan felt much better. He had been faithful to her after all. Even though Emily was probably older and maybe even prettier, he hadn't chosen her. "You mean they didn't have a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship at all?"

"Sadly no." Petta said. "It's a pity, they would have made a good match."

"Maybe he was happy with that other girl." Susan suggested thinking of how happy they had been together before she had started losing faith in Narnia and Aslan.

"Maybe." Petta agreed. "Emily did move on eventally. I don't think she knows Peter's died though."

"Doesn't Emily read the newspapers?" Susan asked.

"Not often." Carl said. "She doesn't like news unless it's a review for her latest performance."

"Thank you for everything." Susan said before she turned to leave. "It was great meeting you both." She thought of her list made a mental note to put a check next to 'see the orphanage he stayed at before mum came for him'.

"Wait, would you like to see the children?" Petta offered.

Susan had never been great with kids but Lucy and Edmund had liked her well enough. And feeling like it was a way to connect with her mother's past, Susan agreed to meet them.

They loved her almost as much as Petta. Matthew, Madison, Emily, Ronnie, Ralph, and Carl had loved Helen.

"Miss Pevensie, will you come back to see us soon?" a little girl with big round eyes who reminded her a great deal of Lucy asked.

Susan looked at the happy smiling children all around her and felt something in her heart melt. "Yes, I'll come back soon." She promised.


	4. A string of pearls is better than gold

The time had come for Annie's dinner party and Susan had come close to calling and canceling. Twice, she'd picked up the phone to do so, and twice she set it back down. The reason? She couldn't cancel because every time she prepared herself to do so, a nagging thought pressed her unwilling to let her off the hook. 'Peter would have wanted you there'. Those six words kept playing over and over in her head, like a broken record until she could stand it no longer.

"Alright!" She cried aloud even though there was no one else in the studio apartment besides herself. "I'm going."

She walked over to her closet and ran her fingers along her 'pretty clothes'. She hadn't worn anything pretty in over a year but she had the feeling she couldn't just arrive at Annie's house wearing those dull traveling clothes again. She ought to dress up a little. But how little? Over a year ago before the crash, She'd have over done it with too much make-up and clothes that matched too well. Now she worried about under doing it. She hadn't dressed up in so long. What if she didn't remember how? Did she even still know how to put on lipstick? Or how to be excited about attending an event? Or how not to feel guilty about being alive when her family was not?

Finally deciding on a plain black dress and a only a touch of some light make-up, Susan started getting ready. She looked in the mirror and saw someone she hadn't seen in a long time staring back at her. A pretty young woman. Her eyes were bright and did not appear blood-shot. Her hair was curled at the tips and fastened back with a silver clasp. The red lipstick wasn't too dark nor too light and it was the only dash of color on her naturally pale skin. She noticed something was missing though. But what? She pressed her fingers lightly to her bare neck.

She dung through an old box in one of the corners with great care because she suspected it had a few sharp and/or broken objects the movers had not packed properly. She'd been to busy weeping to notice the shabby job during the move itself. Finally her hand struck the familiar feel of a velvet-laced black case. In it was one of the few pieces of jewelry Susan still owned. A string of milky-white pearls.

Slowly, she lifted the case's lid. On top of the necklace was a note. Susan gently set it aside. She didn't read it, she already knew that it said,

_To our beloved Su,_

_we're so proud of you._

_We knew you could do it._

_Love,_

_Edmund, Lucy, and Peter._

The three of them had brought the pearl necklace as a gift for her when she'd finally-with much struggling-graduated from school.

Susan lifted the pearl string out as though she was afraid it would turn to ash in her hands as soon as her fingers touched it. Then she slowly lifted it and fastened it around her neck.

When Peter was alive, he'd liked to do it for her. She'd slide her hair away from the back of her neck while he got a good grip of the clasp. After the necklace was on, if no one was watching them, he'd kiss her neck and whisper, "I love you." In her ear.

Don't think about that now, Susan warned herself, you don't want to show up at Annie's puffy-eyed from sobbing. She willed herself to look at the pearls on her neck as if they were any old piece of jewelry and forced herself not to let her mind even start to think about the warm tickle of Peter's breath on her earlobe as he whispered his feelings to her.

Grabbing her black shawl and matching purse, Susan walked out the door and down the stairs into the pizza place she lived on top off. Lucy might have loved living there. She'd always been rather fond of Pizza, but Susan had never much cared for the stuff and was so sick of the smell that she would have given anything to live above a flower shop instead.

"Hullo, Susan." The owner smiled at her kindly. He was a nice old man about sixty-four with naturally up-curling lips that always made it look like he was happy even when he wasn't actually smiling.

"Good evening Mr. Jones." Susan said politely. "Sorry the rent is a little late this month. I promise I'll have it for you in a couple of days."

"Don't you worry about that." Mr. Jones said kindly. "After all you've been through, I'm very impressed with how you've been keeping up with everything as it is."

"Thank you, Sir." She said respectfully, feeling as she always had that she was taking advantage of the poor man's kind nature. "But you needn't act as though my late payment's not a burden on you, I know it is."

Mr. Jones shook his head. It was true that life would be a little easier if he could always count on rent from his little studio-apartment but it wasn't the young lady's fault. Whatever jobs she could get here and there weren't very well paying, he knew that well and he liked having Miss Pevensie around because she reminded him of his own daughter, Sophie Jones, who had also died last year in that horrid railway crash. He'd rather have her living above his pizza place than anyone else, no matter how well they could pay.

Susan headed for the glass-front door that led to the street. Thankfully, it had stopped raining twenty minutes ago and the only wetting she had to worry about was from cars going passed puddles too quickly before she could make it to a bus station.

"You look nice, today." Mr. Jones noted as he started kneading the dough for the latest Pizza order. It hadn't escaped his attention that Susan wasn't wearing her usual clothes which he secretly thought were rather ugly but didn't have the heart to say so. "Where are you going?"

"To a dinner party." Susan told him briefly. "A sort of...aunt...I guess...invited me."

"How nice." Mr. Jones's smile was even wider now. "You have a good time. And don't worry about getting back before closing. I'll leave the side door open for you."

"Thank you." Susan said as she walked out into the street, causing the little bells on the door to jingle a bit.

"God bless her." Mr. Jones sighed to himself, as he finished putting the toppings on the dough and slid the pizza into the oven. "Poor girl. I dare say that a party will do her worlds of good. Sophie liked parties too."

The bus rolled to a stop only walking distance from Annie's house. As she stepped off the bus, Susan wondered what Annie's house would be like. Surely Annie had some money being married to Jacob's brother and all that. But it seemed highly unlikely that she had a house like the one Peter had lived in with Jacob and Elise.

The house was tall and made of stone. It wasn't huge but it wasn't small either. It must have had at least two or three guest rooms judging by the size of it but it wasn't showy. It didn't have gargoyles on the roof, or fountains in the yard. The yard was kept up nicely but not painfully perfectly, the way Elise's was. Also there was a plastic toy slide that had ivy growing on it in the corner next to a gray-wire fence. Obviously, Annie and her husband had at least one child at some point in their life.

Inside, none of the guests at arrived yet and Annie was talking with her son, William who had caught some sort of bad cold.

 _Cough Cough._ William's chest seemed to be attempting to move the location of his lungs.

"You sound awful sweetie." Annie sighed. "Don't you worry about the guests or the party tonight, you just rest up here."

"Sure thing, Mum." The boy croaked. (He had lost quite of bit of his voice due to a sore throat.)

"Poor thing." Annie looked sympathetically at her son. Even though he was in his twenties, she still saw him as her little boy.

He still lived at home and went to a nearby university to study. Which was where he spend most of his time. He was a promising student and no one would even have believed that he would one day be a Janitor in a lab on another continent some day. Everyone thought he would grow up to be a scholar or a writer or a at the very least, a math teacher.

If he had known 'Phyllis' was going to be downstairs at the dinner party that evening, he would have tired to pretend that he wasn't sick so that he could see her. But thinking that it would only be the regular guests and some girl named 'Susan Pevensie' whom his mother had taken a liking to, he didn't bother. He just took a couple of fever reducing pills and decided a nap would do him some good.

"Susan!" Annie cried happily as she opened the door and saw her standing there. "I'm so pleased you could make it." She gave her a light hug. "and you look so pretty, dear."

"Thank you." Susan smiled back at Annie feeling a little strange. She wondered what life would have been like for Peter if he had been taken in by his aunt rather than sent off to an orphanage only to become part of the pevensie family. It wouldn't have been a bad life, but it certainly would have been very different. "Where is everyone?"

"Oh, you're the first to arrive." Annie shrugged. "My husband will be home soon and then the rest of the guests should follow."

"I see." Susan nodded.

"Well why don't you take a seat over on the couch?" Annie offered. "I'd introduce you to my son, William, but I'm afraid he's come down with a bad cold." She lowered her voice. "He doesn't take care of himself like he should. Too busy studying."

Susan closed her eyes and could see Peter sitting at his desk studying for hours behind her closed lids. Maybe he had more in common with his real family than she'd ever suspected. "Peter was like that too."

"Poor boy, I thought he might have been." Annie sighed. "He was such a cleaver little boy. I remember him asking me to explain things in picture books when he was little."

The guests arrived and Susan met Annie's husband who looked almost exactly like Jacob but had a much kinder sounding voice and clearly was a much more thoughtful person.

An hour into the party, Elise and Jacob themselves showed up.

"Nice of you to join us." Annie said through her teeth.

"Yes, it is nice of us, isn't it?" Elise said with a cold smile fiddling with the edge of her fancy fur coat.

"What's she doing here?" Jacob asked eyeing with the corner of his left eye.

"This is my house, Jacob," Annie reminded him sharply. "I'll invite whomever I please."

Jacob rolled his eyes. "Why would you 'Please' to invite some gold-digger into your house?"

"Excuse me?" Susan glared at him. "I am not a gold-digger."

Jacob ignored her and went on, "She thinks she can just waltz right in because she had some sort of fling with our son Pedro."

"Peter!" Annie and Elise corrected him at the same time.

"Like it matters." Jacob went on. "She doesn't belong here."

"Stay out of my business." Annie demanded crossly.

"Pierre, is dead." Jacob said cruelly. "His little friend," he looked at Susan as if he was a king and she was a lowly servant. "isn't one of us."

Susan knew she didn't belong with them, but she had hoped to be friends with Annie. She was so much like her own mother and she'd known Peter as a little boy. But Susan wasn't a Burke. This wasn't her place. But she wasn't going to let Jacob off the hook for accusing her of being a gold-digger in front of all these people. Also, as a queen in Narnia she wasn't much used to being treated like a begger.

"I loved your son very much." Susan said looking Jacob right in the eyes. "Which is more than can be said for you."

"Mind your tongue, Miss." Jacob growled, not liking to be made a fool of in public.

"I don't want your money." Susan went on. "And if I did want money, I wouldn't take it from someone like you. No amount of money is going to bring my family back. No amount of money is going to being, Peter back. And by the way, his name is Peter. That's P-e-t-e-r not, Parker, Pedro, Perry, Percy, or Paul." Susan was on a roll now. "At least I loved him enough not to think he was a whole bloody rugger team!" Then she stomped her foot and ran out the door.

Annie called out for her to wait but she didn't stop. The guests (most of whom secretly dislike Jacob themselves but had never said so) broke into an applause.

Jacob turned red, grabbed his wife's hand and said, "Come on, Elise, we're getting out of here."

Susan ran until she came to the shore (Elise didn't live far from the shore). She climbed on a deck and jumped into the water. She felt her tail form and sighed, looking up at the sky, the clouds parted, and Susan noticed much to her shock, it was a full moon. She hadn't been struck by it in a year. And for the first time, there was no one to help her.


	5. Don't go camping on Mako Island

The full moon was glorious. Its reflection shown like a white path of light along the water Susan was swimming in. It felt almost good to be moonstruck. For the first time in a year, she felt powerful, giddy, strong, maybe even happy. She had one place on her mind, Mako Island.

She started flapping her tail as fast as she could to get the most speed. Soon she was zooming far, far away from the shore and out to sea. She wasn't thinking about what she was doing, she was just doing it.

Soon the island was a dark looming shadow up ahead, she let out a squeal of delight and swam closer. Suddenly a large wave flung her onto the sandy bank. Unable to get back into the water by flapping (She was too far inland for that), she decided to use her powers to dry off a bit. The good result was that she managed to make her tail disappear and legs return. The bad result was that she'd also at the same time dried out a plant to the left of her, and started a fire. She let out a gasp and tried to stand up and run away from it.

"Gracie!" A voice called. "Gracie, are you there?"

Susan hid behind a tree and watched a young teenage boy walking around calling out for someone.

"Gracie, where are you?" The boy called. "It's me, Max." The boy slumped against the tree closest to him and buried his face in his hands. "This is all my fault." He moaned to himself. "I should have known it was a full moon tonight."

Susan slowly tip-toed away from him and walked further up the rocky slope in front of her. She was probably trying to find the moon pool but couldn't remember, even in her moonstruck state, exactly where it was. Walking along she realized how hungry she was. Starving in fact. She need sea food. She nearly cried out for sheer joy when the smell of fish being cooked reached her nose. She followed the smell.

A family was camping on Mako Island. A happy family. A mother with curly golden-brown hair and light grayish-colored eyes, A father with cheerful brown eyes and deeply tanned skin, and their three children.

The oldest was a girl of about twelve with a honey-colored braid that almost reached her waist and long fingers with dirt under the nails which she was carefully removing with a little wooden stick. The next girl was maybe nine or so with a little brown bob and large ears that her face hadn't grown into yet. The youngest was a boy of only seven with curly blond hair, who carried a small stuffed duck around with him everywhere he went.

"Jess, supper is almost ready." The mother said to the oldest girl. "When you've finished cleaning your fingers please come keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn or stick to the pan, will you? I want to look for your father, he's wandered off again, and gotten lost as likely as not."

Jess sighed and walked over to the pan that was propped right above their little camping fire. The fish did smell wonderful. "Ducky take that leaf out of your mouth now!"

The boy's real name was Dick but because he carried that stuffed duck about and loved it so, people had gotten into the habit of calling him, "Duck" and his sisters who loved him more than anyone (Expect for maybe his parents) had taken to calling him "Ducky" as a term of affection. He didn't seem to mind the nickname, in fact he seemed to like it and often wasn't likely to answer to anyone who called him "Dick".

Ducky, who was a very obedient boy, removed the leaf from his mouth at once. "Sorry."

"What's that sound?" Cried Violet (The second eldest girl). She heard the sound of branches snapping and heavy breathing.

"It must be father or mother coming back." Jess decided.

"But what if it's a bear?" Whispered Violet, pulling on the tips of her brown bob trying not to sound as afraid as she felt. She was secretly terrified of most wild animals. Bears in particular gave her nightmares.

"I like bears." Ducky said. "I hope it is one."

"I don't." Jess said. "but it's not a bear, it can't be."

"How are you so sure?" Violet demanded.

"Bears don't live on islands." Jess said, even though she wasn't sure if that was true or not.

"You don't know that." Violet folded her arms across her chest.

"It's too light to be a bear. Listen, it's coming closer." Jess told her.

"Mummy?" Ducky called out assuming that the bare white foot he'd just caught sight of in the bushes was his mother.

The girls whipped their heads around to see what Ducky was looking at and saw a young woman with long black hair, looking very tired, approaching the camp.

"Who's that?" Violet asked.

"How should I know?" Jess snapped.

"Hello!" Ducky waved to the woman before one of his sisters (I think it was Jess but some have claimed it was Violet) slapped his hand down.

"Hush." Jess told him sharply.

The young woman, of course was none other than moonstruck Susan. She didn't notice the children, she was only interested in fish that they were cooking.

"She's got such a wild look in her eyes, Jess." Violet whispered. "I don't like it. Suppose she's a killer or worse."

Ducky, who had very sharp ears and never missed anything being said near him, laughed and said in a loud voice. "She's too pretty to be a killer."

"Don't be stupid." Jess warned him. "Killers can be pretty."

"Can they?" Ducky looked very confused. "I thought killers were big men with guns who..."

"Oh will you shut up?" Jess snapped. "This isn't a time for talking."

"She's coming closer!" Violet cried out in an alarmed voice.

"Miss, who are you?" Jess called out.

Susan looked at her blankly and then reached into the pan with her hands-she suffered a few finger burns but nothing serious-and started pulling out the fish and popping it into her mouth. "Hmm."

"Hey, she's eating our food." Moaned Ducky. "Listen here, lady, that's ours!"

His sisters were too stunned to speak. Who was this strange woman eating their supper without even asking?

"Do you think she can talk?" Violet spoke at last.

"Do you?" Jess asked. "I can't even guess."

"I think she's a wild woman, raised by wolves in a cave." Violet said. (She had always been the most imaginative of the family)

Jess hadn't a spark of imagination in her. "I think she's lost. Maybe from a ship wreck." She decided practically. "It's much more likely than a wolf woman."

"I know, but just look at her!" Cried Violet, pointing to Susan who was swallowing the last bit of their supper whole. "She's gulping down all of our fish like an animal!"

"Maybe she's just mortal hungry." Jess said, stubbornly.

Ducky after getting over his outrage at having their supper stolen, was quite willing to make friends with the strange lady. "Hello."

"Do you have any more fish?" Susan asked looking back at the empty pan in front of her.

"Haven't you had enough?" Jess glared at her. "You've eaten up our whole meal!"

Susan shrugged and noticed a drop of water left from an earlier rain fall sliding off a branch. She lifted her palm, with the intent of freezing only the water drop but froze half the tree it was on by mistake.

"Ahhhhhh!" Violet panicked, grabbing on to her sister's coat.

"Let go of me!" Jess insisted, grabbing Ducky's collar so he couldn't get any closer to Susan.

Sensing that the people in front of her didn't like the ice on the tree, Susan decided to boil it away. But all that did was set the tree on fire and cause the children to panic even more.

"Run run!" Violet screamed wildly, throwing her hands in the air. "Flee! Flee!"

Jess got up, taking Ducky's hand and started running so quickly that she over took her sister.

Susan looked around at the camp and shrugged. Standing up she went back to the ocean and headed for the underground passage into the moon pool that she had just remembered. She had found it and was just about to swim in when she heard frightened voices above her.

"That was some fall huh?" Ducky said cheerfully. They'd all fallen through the steep top in their panicked stampede to get away from Susan.

"My butt hurts." Wailed Jess wishing she wasn't the oldest and could cry more freely.

"I hit my head on something." Violet moaned.

"Yeah, my head." Jess glared at her.

"Pretty water." Ducky said, looking over to the pool.

"Stay away from that!" Jess ordered.

"Look at that!" Violet pointed to the moon coming through the opening over head shinning on the water making it glow and bubble. "It's like a sort of magic isn't it?"

"Don't be silly." Jess huffed. "It's pretty alright, but how's that going to get us out of...what are you doing?!"

Violet reached over to touch the water. "I have too. I feel I couldn't live with myself if I didn't..."

"Don't be a fool!" Jess cried wishing her sister could have a little more sense.

Violet would have touched that water and likely have turned into a mermaid if Susan hadn't lifted her palm and frozen the entire pool seconds before she could make contact with the moonlit water.

"Whoa." Jess looked like she might throw up.

Ducky rubbed his eyes over and over.

Violet, who was inclined to be hysterical, burst into tears and her teeth started chattering with fear.

Susan swam away from the moon pool and went back to the main island. She was feeling quite sleepy now. She headed back for the camp. (The fire she'd started had thankfully managed to somehow go out on it's own and not engulf the island in flames. Perhaps because it was a rather cool night and the air was moist.)

"Gracie!" A voice said from behind. "There you are!" Max saw Susan from behind and mistook her for his girlfriend.

He reached out and pulled her shoulder so she was facing him. Then he realized his mistake. The girl in front of him was a few years older than Gracie and a compete stranger.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else." Max apologized.

Susan nodded and took off.

"Say, have you seen a girl who looks lik..." Max started to ask her about Gracie before he noticed she was gone. "Hey, where'd she run off to?"

Once at the camp site, Susan went into one of the tents (This one had an opening above it that she could see the moon through). Then she curled up into a tight ball between two of the sleeping bags and feel asleep.

"Why don't you believe us?" Violet bawled to her parents after they'd been rescued from the cave by their father, and were headed back to the camp site. (It was shortly before the moon set, and the sun was already up)

"A wild girl that can freeze things and start fires and ate all our fish?" The father laughed. "Gee, I don't know, it doesn't sound the least bit far fetched."

"But she's telling the truth." Cried Jess. "We all saw her. She was insane. She started a fire. Just look at the tree when we get back to the camp. It must be all burned up."

"We've already seen the tree." The mother said. "I don't doubt that you saw a small fire and got spooked. But I don't believe you saw a wild wolf woman."

"Well she might not be a wolf woman." Jess said. "That's only what Violet thinks she is."

"She was pretty." Ducky said simply. "Very pretty."

"That's true but she was some kind of inhuman unholy creature as well." Jess said. "You should have seen her."

"She was a monster." Violet insisted dramatically. "She swallowed up that fish like it was a grape."

Why is our tent flap open?" The mother asked when they'd reached the camp site.

"A bear might have..." Violet whimpered.

"Oh shut up!" Jess hissed. "There are no bears here."

"Maybe the lady with dark hair who likes fish came back." Ducky suggested. "She might be hungry again."

"Oh no, you don't suppose she would come back do you?" Jess asked her sister.

"I don't know." Violet shrugged. "But she did frighten us off, we didn't scare her one bit, so why wouldn't she come on back if she was tired? Oh, you don't think she'll eat us the way she ate that fish do you?"

"A cannibal in addition to a wild woman?" Their father chuckled. "I think you kids are losing it big time."

"She wont eat us." Jess said. "at least I hope not."

"Will this help?" Violet grabbed a baseball bat from father's bag and held it up in the air.

"Yes, hand it over." Jess demanded, starting to feel a little afraid herself.

"Hand it to me." Their father insisted. "Just in case it's an animal that needs to be scared off or something."

Violet handed him the bat with trembling hands. It might be a bear or that wild woman again. She wasn't sure which she was more afraid of at the moment.

Susan opened her eyes to see a man above her with a baseball bat. "Ahhhhhhh!" She screamed.

The man lowered the bat.

"You see?" Jess stormed into the tent. "It is the wild woman."

"Wild woman?" Susan blinked at them in confusion. "what do you mean?"

They noticed something they'd been to scared to notice the night before when she'd asked for more sea food. She had a British accent.

"Last night you...you attacked our camp." Jess said feeling very surprised at the sanity with which the 'wild woman' spoke.

"I did?" Susan asked. "Where am I?"

"Mako Island." The father told her.

"Oh no." Susan shook her head. "I need to get back to England."

"That's a long way from here." The father told her.

"I know, I've been here before...years ago..." Susan told them. "I just don't remember..."

"How did you get here to begin with?" The mother asked as Susan walked out of the tent.

"I don't know." Susan said. "I honestly don't. All I remember was going out for a swim after a dinner party and the clouds parting..." Suddenly she understood. She'd been moonstruck. And With no one to help her, she'd gone and done what she'd tried to do several times before, swim to Mako Island.

"Are you going to eat us?" Ducky asked remembering what his sister had said.

"Of course not." She laughed. "Why would I do that?"

"You ate a whole fish you did!" Ducky told her.

"Please excuse the children." the mother apologized to her. "They seem to be convinced that you ate our supper and started a forest fire. But that's children for you."

"Yes, children and their pretends..." Susan focused a smile as she gladly excepted a glass of juice from the father. This was the second time in her life she was pretending that something she knew must be real was only a make-believe story. She only hoped this time it wouldn't cause as much pain.


	6. money and minds

"It's a good thing it's England of all places." the family's father said to Susan as they packed up the camping gear. "If it was anywhere else we wouldn't know what to do about you." As it turned out, the family's mother happened to have a distant aunt in England who's adopted daughter was on her way home from being on tour in a place that thankfully was very close to Mako Island.

"I still say there's something wrong with her." Jess whispered to her mother in an uneasy voice. "You should have seen her last night!"

"Oh, Jess, really! You're getting as bad as Violet!" Her mother laughed merrily.

"Pshaw!" Violet tossed her head and refused to talk to anyone. She was sick of not being believed when she ought to be. Why couldn't people tell the difference between when she was making up a story for fun and when she was telling the truth?

Ducky, unlike his sisters, was more than willing to believe that there was nothing whatsoever the matter with the friendly lady in front of them. He gathered a small bunch of daisies and brought them over to her.

Susan felt misty-eyed as the little boy held up the flowers for her. Edmund and Lucy had taken to doing similar things when they were little. Oh, how she missed them. "Thank you dear."

"Your welcome, San." (Ducky had decided to call 'Susan', 'San' and she didn't have the heart to tell him how lousy the nickname really was.)

"Emily will be here at three to give you a lift back to England." The father explained kindly.

"Wait did you say 'Emily'?" Susan asked, remembering they'd also said she was 'on tour' and 'adopted'.

"Yes." He nodded.

"Emily is a dancer?" Susan asked to be sure.

"Yes, why?" The father wanted to know.

Susan shook her head and smiled at him. "No reason. Thank you for everything."

"Oh, don't worry about it." The father said. "We don't mind lending a helping hand every once in a while."

The family left and Susan sat, looking out at the sea, waiting for Emily to arrive. If this really was Peter's Emily, she wasn't sure she wanted to meet her. True, Peter had chosen her over Emily, but things would still be awkward.

The most elegant yacht Susan had ever seen came towards the Island at a steady speed. It was a smooth creamy color and their wasn't even the slightest trace of rust or dents anywhere on it. The deck looked as perfectly polished as a mirror in a dance studio.

A strikingly attractive young woman of about twenty five wanted out onto the island She was dressed in fashionable clothes and wore diamond earrings. She was tall, thin, and rather pretty. Emily had been only reasonably appealing in looks as a child but had grown prettier and prettier every year. And of course having money to buy whatever she needed to make herself look good also came in handy.

"Hello, you must be, Susan." Emily said, giving her a friendly smile. The two of them got on the boat and the captain started it up.

They both leaned on the deck railings saying nothing. Emily glanced over at Susan for a moment, in deep thought as if trying to remember something. "Your last name doesn't happen to be Pevensie does it?"

"Yes," Susan said, wondering how she'd guessed. "it does. How did you know?"

Sliding her fingers along the rail as she spoke, Emily said, "Oh you look like your mother..." If she was even a little distraught at the discovery that the girl she was rescuing from the island was the girlfriend of the boy she had fallen for years ago, she didn't show it. "...Also, Peter talked about you."

The sad, unfulfilled look in Emily's eyes when she said his name, made Susan feel unexpectedly moved. "Do you know..." She wondered if Emily had heard of the crash.

"Yes." Emily said softly. "I know." She closed her eyes. "I read about it in the paper."

"Petta said you didn't read the news." Susan blurted out before she could stop herself.

"My birth parents died in a railway accident two days after I was born." Emily said, her voice almost a whisper and slightly choked like she was trying not to cry. "Every time there's a railway crash I always read about it...I don't know, it makes me feel closer to them somehow."

Susan held back tears of her own. "I'm sorry." Even though she'd come to hate those words having heard them over and over again from countless people during the last year, she couldn't think of anything else to say in their place.

"Me too." Emily sighed.

The island was getting further and further away and both girls stopped and took one last look at it before it seemly disappeared under the blue water the boat was gliding over.

"You're lucky, you know." Emily told Susan.

"Lucky, how?" Susan asked.

"That you got to know your family before you lost them." Emily said simply. "That you and Peter had time together before he died." She looked at Susan. Her dress was torn and not nearly as fine as Emily's own designer traveling dress, and she only wore one piece of jewelry that was worth nothing next to the diamonds Emily had in her bedroom. And yet, she looked at her not with pity, but with envy. "I give anything to be in your place."

"But you have everything." Susan pointed out. She eyed the sparkling deck they were standing on.

"I have nothing." Emily said disdainfully. "I have money. What's that worth? money can't buy me someone to spend my life with. Money can't buy me a chance to know what my real parents were like. Money couldn't make Peter chose me over you. If you had all this money, you'd still miss your family. Money changes nothing. Money is nothing. I'd give all of this up, if I could have just one of the many happy memories you must have from the life you've lived."

Susan felt as thought someone had taken a blindfold off of her eyes and she was seeing everything for the first time. Life seemed so different suddenly. "I never thought of it that way."

"Most don't." Emily said. "for some reason, very one thinks money is some kind of magic cure for everything...but listen to me Susan, when I say, it most certainly is nothing of the sort."

Late that evening-in England-Susan arrived back at the pizza place feeling very guilty. Mr. Jones was probably very worried about her.

The fire was lit and old Mr. Jones was sitting in a chair looking blankly into the core of the fireplace. He seemed very at peace.

Susan slowly opened the side door and crept in.

"Ah, so you've come back at last have you?" Mr. Jones turned and smiled at her.

Susan was relived that he wasn't angry. In his place, she might have been. After all he'd probably had the side door open all night expecting her to come in and lock it behind herself. "Yes, I've come back."

"Good, it's nice that you've finally come to see me." Mr. Jones babbled on. "It's been so long you know. Ever since you went away to university...I have missed you..."

"Mr. Jones, I never went to a university." Susan told him, taking a step closer to his chair. What was he talking about?

"Same sense of humor as your mother, eh, Sophie?" Mr. Jones stood up and started making tea in an old pot that Susan was sure he hadn't used in years.

"I'm not Sophie." Susan said, feeling a chill run up and down her spine as she realized he thought he was talking to his dead daughter. "It's me, Susan."

"Eh...what's that?" Mr. Jones laughed. "Changing your name again? What's wrong with being called Sophie?"

"Nothing, expect I'm not Sophie, I'm Susan." Susan told him firmly.

"I feel down yesterday..." Mr. Jones told her. "A nasty little fall, think I blacked out for a minute. Maybe it was more thought because someone had time to change the old pizza place around before I woke up. I came in here and it was all different. I like it, do you like it? It's just the way I always thought it would look if I got it all fixed up the way I wanted."

Suddenly, Susan understood what was going on. Mr. Jones must have hurt himself and suffered some memory loss.

"Mr. Jones, we need to get you to a doctor." Susan told him.

"Now, now, don't you be one of those daughters who's always a-thinking her father can't look after himself. I'm tough, my girl. I don't need no doctor."

"Yes you do." Susan insisted, grabbing the phone book to get a cab company number.

"Are you calling, Jack?" Mr. Jones asked with a teasing sort of grin. "Has he asked you to marry him yet?" He spent the next few moments going on and on about Sophie's boyfriend, Jack. Who, apparently had been to put it in Mr. Jones's own worlds "A dang good fellow, worthy of any woman."

The cab pulled into the drive and Susan helped Mr. Jones into it.

"Where to, miss?" The cab driver asked.

"Yes, where are you talking your old father?" Mr. Jones laughed as if he was being dragged off to a surprise party he'd secretly found out about before hand. He winked at Susan as she whispered to the driver that he should just go to the nearest hospital.

"What are we doing here?" Mr. Jones asked as Susan led him out of the cab and into the green-carpeted lobby.

"It's for your own good." She told him.

Mr. Jones gave her a pat on the cheek. "There's a good girl, making sure your father makes it to his check ups. I love you, Sophie."

Tears streamed down Susan's face as she looked into Mr. Jones's eyes which were over-following with warmth. The man was convinced that he was having a nice chat with his daughter. He had no idea who Susan Pevensie was. And in that sense, Susan knew she was losing yet another person she cared about.

"Sophie..." Mr. Jones said softly, suddenly starting to cry himself now. "I don't know why, but I keep thinking you shouldn't go on that train tomorrow. I keep thinking something bad is going to happen."

Susan noticed that he had started filling out a form out of habit and that in the spot where the year should have been he had written 1949 and the day was day before the date of the crash that had killed his daughter and her family.

Susan leaned over and squeezed his hand. "Something bad did happen. To both of us."


	7. how it all ended but really began

Susan wondered what the doctor would do about Mr. Jones. He was an old man with-as far as she knew-no family members to look after him.

The doctor said it was highly possible that Mr. Jones might never recover from the memory loss. "Now there's still a slim chance that after a while, It'll start to come back to him but...it's doubtful."

"What should I do?" Susan asked.

The doctor looked very surprised and nearly dropped the clip board he had been holding. "You aren't to do anything, what the hospital is going to do, is look into rest homes. Perhaps the Pizza Place could be sold for money to send him to a nice one."

Mr. Jones despite being old had very good hearing. "Eh, what's that? Sell my Pizza place?" He let out a laugh. "Ha, Sophie's not going to let you put her old father in a rest home, are you, Sophie?" He looked at Susan eagerly.

Susan was torn. She couldn't let him get sent to a rest home but how could she look after him and the Pizza place all by herself? No, she'd have to let him go. She loved him but she couldn't do anything, she wasn't Sophie. Then she looked back into the beaming mans face and for a moment saw a strange likeness to Edmund. As a toddler, Edmund had given her that expression countless times when he expected her to stick up for him. And now Mr. Jones wanted-no, needed-the same thing.

"I'll take care of him." Susan said firmly. "He's not going to a rest home."

"Atta, girl!" Mr. Jones cheered, with a wide grin on his face. "Always was such a good child, going to take care of her old father."

The doctor lowered his voice hoping Mr. Jones wouldn't be able to hear him if he got the pitch soft enough. "He can't even remember your real name."

"I don't care." Susan said stubbornly, unwilling to budge in the matter.

"But you can't run his business." The doctor protested.

"Can't I?" Susan gave the doctor a cold look. "Just watch me."

To put it lightly, the work was hard. She didn't know much about payments to employees or where to order sauce from. Thankfully, Mr. Jones still knew all about that stuff and told, 'Sophie' what she needed to know. It worked out well except for the rare times when Susan would discover that a certain person Mr. Jones had reminded her to pay had been dead for over three months or that this or that place that she was told she could get the best cheese from had been out of business for nearly half a year.

But she did the best she could and looked after Mr. Jones. She saw to it that he got the medical care he needed. (which included fishing medical notices out of the large house plant by the pizza place door where Mr. Jones kept hiding them when they came in the mail). She also made sure he ate enough. Unfortunately because they were both so poor, most of the vegetables they had at supper were left over pizza toppings.

For the most part though, Susan was happy. She felt like she'd accomplished something in her life at last. She'd gone and found out all she needed to know about Peter and as she had no other ambitions why couldn't she spend the rest of her time looking after a good friend? He'd helped her out greatly when she'd needed it. Letting the rent slide with no complaint when she'd had no money to pay him with. Thinking of this made her feel guilty that she'd considered even for a moment letting him go to a rest home. The best part of worrying about Mr. Jones all the time was that it gave her less time to spend crying upstairs by herself missing her siblings.

The only thing that Susan couldn't get used to was being called, 'Sophie'. She cringed every time Mr. Jones called her that, feeling like she was a pretender pulling a cruel prank on the poor man. But there was nothing she could do. Once, she'd come close to getting him to call her by her real name, but it didn't last.

"Sophie," He had said. "Aren't you going back to university this year?"

Susan had been cleaning the counter as the last customer for that day left. "I'm Susan."

Mr. Jones shook his head. "Oh, right, Susan of course..." He looked almost like he'd been before he'd lost his memory but then it passed. "Sophie, hand me that book over there."

Susan knew it wasn't his fault but she felt angry all the same. "Here!" She snapped handing him his book.

"Thank you." Mr. Jones didn't seem to notice the harsh way she spoke to him.

Ten years passed and Mr. Jones got older and older. He still called Susan, 'Sophie' and strangely enough she'd finally managed to get a little used to it though the sting of guilt still struck her every time he did so. Yet, as of late, there was a difference in him. He looked at her strangely and whenever he'd called her 'Sophie' he'd looked a little uncertain. So much so that he'd stopped addressing her at all if he could help it.

Susan also noticed he'd become quieter and didn't eat as much.

"Come on, you must be hungry." Susan urged him to have some lunch.

"No thank you." Mr. Jones smiled at her and waved it away. "I just want to sit and look out the window some more."

"You've been looking out the window for five hours." Susan reminded him.

"Have I?" Mr. Jones looked confused. "I could have sworn it was only a minute or so."

That night, Mr. Jones started coughing loudly and Susan got up and ran to him. "Are you alright?"

Mr. Jones looked very weak, and was lying on the floor as though he'd taken a fall from his bed.

"I'm going to call the doctor." Susan told him.

Mr. Jones reached for her wrists. "Wait a minute, Sophie."

"I'm Susan." She said,

Mr. Jones blinked at her for a moment. "I know..." He said recognizing her for the first time in ten years. "I just miss her so much."

Susan helped him back into bed.

His eyes started to close. "Susan..." He said.

"Yes?" She answered.

"thank you." And with that, the poor man breathed his last breath, the corners of his lips turned up as he exhaled, he died smiling and he died, knowing exactly who it was who'd taken care of him in his old age.

As for Susan she lived on working at the pizza place until she grew old herself. Then she sold it. She thought London was getting a bit too fast paced for her and she couldn't keep up. She decided for the time being to rent a house far, far away from England, but only a reasonable sized swim away from Mako Island.


End file.
